Last week the Land Trust embarked on another round of slash pile burning at our Metolius Preserve. Crews were busy on a snowy day lighting piles of trees and branches that were thinned last fall from the northern section of the Land Trust's Metolius Preserve. The thinning was part of our larger project to restore the native pondersoa pine forests of the Preserve.

In the video below, stewardship director Amanda Egertson takes you out the Preserve to check in on some piles and show you why we monitor these burns so closely and why it’s so important to burn when conditions are wet. As you'll see, a nearby snag caught on fire creating its own little spot burn. While we like to encourage snags in our forest, this one was very old and so decayed, it was no longer the best home for wildlife.